What They Mean: Really, there's more story to be told! But we don't know if we can tell it anymore because nobody liked or watched our shit since we have no talent. So buy our Blu-rays so we can get another season going! Please, we're beggin you! Buy lots of them! Get them for your friends! Tell them the discs make good coasters! C'mon, we desperately need the money! Our careers are resting on this! Look, I know we did a terrible job, but if I don't bring in some real money soon, my wife's going to...oh, no! She's carrying a suitcase.She's walking out the door. My wife just left me. My parents have disowned me. I...don't have anything now. Just my job working for low-rent animation studio...and I'm terrible at it!I guess...I'm just gonna have to end it all. Goodbye, cruel world. Good–

Can't believe how much I got shat on in the reddit when this shitstain's first trailer came out and i was like Uh Oh these animators, cant animate and these sound designers can't sound design. Hate to get satisfaction from such a collective hate from the fanbase now But dammit it brought new fans, which I can't comprehend but it did?

Can't believe how much I got shat on in the reddit when this shitstain's first trailer came out and i was like Uh Oh these animators, cant animate and these sound designers can't sound design. Hate to get satisfaction from such a collective hate from the fanbase now But dammit it brought new fans, which I can't comprehend but it did?

Whatever the amount of new fans the 2016 anime has attracted, it's only a fraction of what could have been had Berserk received a faithful and decently animated adaptation. And furthermore, assuming those new fans became the paying consumers of the Berserk manga, that happened not because of the 2016 anime but in spite of it.

Whatever amount of new fans the 2016 anime has (allegedly) attracted, it's less than a fraction of what could have been had Berserk received a faithful and decently animated adaptation. And even then, assuming those new fans became the paying consumers of the Berserk manga, that happened not because of the 2016 anime but in spite of it.

I'm just going on the people that go on reddit and post like ''Hi new fan from the anime and started reading the manga'' not on alleged statistics, plus the amount of growth the reddit and the general interest has had can't be denied, and ofc an actual not piece of garbage adaptation would be a much more effective and important source of new berserk hype, but that's hypotheticals and not the point I was making

Can't believe how much I got shat on in the reddit when this shitstain's first trailer came out and i was like Uh Oh these animators, cant animate and these sound designers can't sound design. Hate to get satisfaction from such a collective hate from the fanbase now

Dude, no one cares about your victory lap around anonymous Internet straw men on a completely different site. Grow up.

Why is it hard to comprehend? It's a new anime. It got headlines, carrying the name Berserk to more people, and it reignited activity in wayward fans. Naturally it's going to attract a few more people than it would if there were nothing, even if the subpar quality eventually caught up to the collective perception of the adaptation (it was a slow burn in that direction for most casual fans). The net was always going to be a positive for the overall series, because the manga quality ISN'T shit, and people stick around for it. This is the entire reason this garbage we had to endure even exists.

Now for some numbers. The latest sales figures we have pre-date the 2016 anime. However, Berserk gained 5 million readers worldwide from July 2015 to Feb 2016 (from 35m to 40m), which is a pretty significant gain for that brief time frame. Note that this growth was documented before the launch of the anime, but during the window of time that it was announced -- a testament to the hype built around the series from the mere announcement that a new anime was coming.

Marathoned the second half of the season last night, and I was thoroughly unimpressed with anything it offered (what a surprise). I'll leave it short since my feelings align with most everyone else's sentiments. The only positive comment I can say is that some of the animations were improved from last season, but largely everything was the same or worse. I was particularly bothered by the assault on Flora's mansion. I can only hope this shit is finally done and buried.

It's unfortunate they provide zero sourcing for all that behind-the-scenes information. Anime News Network should at least attempt to look professional.

That aside, the main problem I have with this article is how the author attempts to paint the situation as a tragic inevitability, with the conclusion basically being that no one should be blamed. On the contrary, every person who worked on that clusterfuck of a project bears the blame for it. That includes the director and producer, but not only. I don't buy the bullshit excuse about 3DSMax not being able to render the models because they were so good, so they had to be turned into shit instead. It's a cheap excuse. It all just reeks of poor planning, poor skills, poor management, poor execution. A squandered budget by a bunch of incompetents who hopefully will never work in the field again.

This reminds me a lot about what happened to Mass Effect: Andromeda. Incompetent people in charge, lots of useful time wasted, leading to huge schelude pressure and people blaming their tools, as if nobody knows what they're working with. Bullcrap, of course. The difference is ME:A had a staff with some actual skill to work on it.

It's a shame this crap studio gets paid at the cost of Berserk's name.

Even if this artical has no sources and weather it's true or not. They will never admit that they are so terrible and their work is not professional. They blame their tools and not themselves like almost everyone else.

Nobody is gonna accept their excuces anyway. They destroyed one of the best manga series of all time. And after makimg two terrible adoptions of it they are like"oh sorry our tools are not good so we f***ed up"

If they are gonna blame their tools, actually not only CGI thing is bad. The whole anime is terrible, direction, timing useage for music *Hai yo everytime* and soundeffects *GLANG* And camera angles is bad too. And it moves fast as fk.

They better never ever touch Berserk again after what the disaster they made in these 2 years.

This article reads not so much as an "exposé" on the behind-the-scenes making of the 2016-2017 Berserk anime, but as an attempt to whitewash and exculpate the Berserk Partners, Liden Films, GEMBA and whoever else responsible for making this abortion of an adaptation.

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But to say the staff lacked foresight would be unfair. Many voices within GEMBA spoke out as the project was being greenlit, skeptical about their ability to produce such taxing work.

Interesting. If there were dissenters within GEMBA who realized they were biting off way more than they could chew, then why we've never heard their voices when the 2016 anime was first announced? But it would be great if a kind soul from within GEMBA/Liden Films was generous enough to reveal the current Berserk anime's budget. That person can use the Wikileaks or even Reddit to leak that information. Because the series' budget is the elephant in the room that May keeps constantly alluding to throughout his article, but carefully dancing around it without mentioning directly. Only a wretchedly low budget could explain why Berserk ended up getting animated by some shoddy moe anime studios like GEMBA/Millipensee. Because the high-caliber anime studios like Madhouse, Sunrise or Production IG do not come cheap. Nor do the services of top tier directors like Shinichiro Watanabe, Hideaki Anno or even Naohito Takahashi for that matter.

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It's been argued that Itagaki's history with brightly-colored comedy and silly action series would clash with the dark and gritty world of Berserk, but the real cause of the conflict turned out to be Itagaki's insistence upon a very particular aesthetic that proved too difficult to achieve.

For fuck's sake.... Really, man? So according to May, Shin Itagaki's ADHD-style directing had absolutely nothing to do with this series being a steaming pile of shit that it is? And that the issue was just the "aesthetic" choices, and everything else about Itagaki was was fine and dandy?

A quick Google search on Itagaki reveals that he is, first and foremost, a moe anime specialist. About 95% of stuff he worked on before Berserk lies in moe/kawaii genre. You have to look no further than "Teekyuu" to see what type of lowest-common-denominator horseshit he's passionately into (seriously - he directed, scripted, edited, storyboarded and even composed the music for that thing) and if you need evidence as to how woefully unfit he's for directing anything even remotely resembling Berserk.

Notice how Itagaki's trademark hyperactive directing style, jumpy scene transitions and herky-jerky pacing are already firmly established in Teekyuu, way before he had the opportunity to perpetrate those self-same "talents" onto Berserk.

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3D animation is the only practical way to adapt Berserk to a television series in today's anime production environment.

Let's see if I'm reading this correctly - has the Japanese anime industry so far degraded since the 1990s, that it's become impossible to produce serious, mature anime that doesn't look like shit? Or is he saying that Berserk is unworthy of receiving an anime adaptation with the integrity and the production values afforded to the likes of Attack on Titan or Fullmetal Alchemist: Brotherhood? And that Berserk deserves to be chucked into the hands of grossly incompetent morons who can't direct worth shit, write worth shit or animate worth shit? If this is what the "today's anime production environment" has come to, then it's far better off if Berserk anime never got made in the first place. At least not until if the anime industry recovers from its current stagnation and there would be a door open for a faithful and decently animated Berserk series.

This article would explain a lot if it were reliable and true (I'm hoping we can get more information out of the author, and we should be skeptical in the meantime), but I agree with Johnny that the animation and rendering is only one part of the problem. All of the technical difficulties with the 3D could have been avoided if they had ponied up for a decent 2D production staff in the first place, and I reject the notion that it could have only been made in 3D. I think it could have been made decently in 3D if they'd given it to a more capable 3D studio such as Toei or Polygon, but given the state of the art right now it probably couldn't look as good as proper 2D. 3D anime is rapidly getting better on the cutting edge but it's still not there yet.

Anyway, Itagaki's incompetent directing style and the series composition that left out so much material would have shot the show in the foot even if it had been gorgeously animated. I thought the movie trilogy was wonderfully animated whenever it stuck mostly with 2D, but the problems with the story and writing alone were enough to bring it down. Berserk (2016) was a catastrophic failure in multiple departments (let's not forget the music and sound), and this article only scratches the surface of that multifaceted failure.

So all the information is from an article in this January 2017 issue of CG World. If I understand correctly it was translated by Frog-kun (Kim Morissey), who passed the information on to Canipa (Collum May). Frog kun tweets:

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I helped do the research for this one. Well, I just read an old CG World article for Callum, which contained ALL the answers. It was hard to dig up any other interviews, maybe because the production was so tragic that nobody involved could bear talking about it. The CG World article was actually pretty funny, the way it tried to spin the entire shitfest in a positive way. *lists ALL the ways Berserk went wrong* "The staff was able to overcome their challenges and finish the project!"

I really hope more people on the inside speak up and describe what the royal fuck what went wrong in the second cour soon, because it looks like production was really falling apart at the seams by then. The shit that happened there should never have gone to print, and it should be held up as an example of what not to do in an anime production. Hearing their justifications for some of their baffling decisions on what to cut and what to keep, like why they thought omitting the Moonlight Boy of all things, would also be good for a laugh. Just don't try and make feel sorry for Itagaki or anyone else involved again.

So all the information is from an article in this January 2017 issue of CG World. If I understand correctly it was translated by Frog-kun (Kim Morissey), who passed the information on to Canipa (Collum May).

Thanks for finding this out, and thanks to Kim Morissey for the clarification. It's unfortunate Collum May did not make it clearer that his entire article was sourced from that CG World issue.

I agree with Johnny that the animation and rendering is only one part of the problem. All of the technical difficulties with the 3D could have been avoided if they had ponied up for a decent 2D production staff in the first place, and I reject the notion that it could have only been made in 3D. I think it could have been made decently in 3D if they'd given it to a more capable 3D studio such as Toei or Polygon, but given the state of the art right now it probably couldn't look as good as proper 2D.

Of course, these are just excuses conjured up by someone to try and shift the blame away from themselves. And the obsession with 3D is purely a budget matter.

Anyway, Itagaki's incompetent directing style and the series composition that left out so much material would have shot the show in the foot even if it had been gorgeously animated. I thought the movie trilogy was wonderfully animated whenever it stuck mostly with 2D, but the problems with the story and writing alone were enough to bring it down.

Exactly. As Walter has said in the past, the core problem with these productions is that the people working on them clearly don't understand what Berserk is about. That's why both the movies and the TV series are terrible. They systematically put emphasis on the wrong scenes, wrong lines, wrong moments. The timing is always off, the tone is always improper. It's actually quite stricking to me that supposed professionals could be so inept. In comparison, for all its numerous flaws, at least the '97 TV series understood the work it was adapting, and that's why it remains superior to this day.

While we're talking about why the recent adaptation was total ass, i came across a youtube video that makes some good points about why it didnt work, and what would have worked better: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=v6CJaChQ7rQ He makes the argument that the manga is a picturesque work, and they tried to adapt it as a dynamic work. Picturesque meaning its about the visual detail and not the motion in it. He argues that the 1997 anime and its style, colors, etc. were much more fitting. He also argued that the world of berserk is very gritty, grimy, and dirty, and cgi and 3d computer models are always very glossy and cant portray that grit.

While we're talking about why the recent adaptation was total ass, i came across a youtube video that makes some good points about why it didnt work, and what would have worked better: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=v6CJaChQ7rQ He makes the argument that the manga is a picturesque work, and they tried to adapt it as a dynamic work. Picturesque meaning its about the visual detail and not the motion in it. He argues that the 1997 anime and its style, colors, etc. were much more fitting. He also argued that the world of berserk is very gritty, grimy, and dirty, and cgi and 3d computer models are always very glossy and cant portray that grit.

In my opinion most of these analysis videos on youtube are very pseudo-intellectual. And the guys whole point is based on terms to make people think his arguement is smart, but it limits the arguement. Title should've been ''Kinetic vs Picturesque in anime'' then I'd be completly fine

In my opinion most of these analysis videos on youtube are very pseudo-intellectual. And the guys whole point is based on terms to make people think his arguement is smart, but it limits the arguement. Title should've been ''Kinetic vs Picturesque in anime'' then I'd be completly fine

The video is garbage, the only good thing about it is the video editing.